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Star Rating for Reviews

Star Rating for Reviews is a simple WordPress plugin that inserts pretty rating stars based on the score you assign using intuitive, inline [rating:] tags. It can also calculate and output overall ratings for you based on all previous scores you have assigned, useful for reviews that have multiple categories or an album review where each track is assigned a score.

This plugin supports storing rating data into your WordPress database. These data can then be retrieved by functions provided to output a list of reviews, sortable by date, post title or rating scores. Random reviews function and single post function (to be used in WordPress loop) are also provided, see Usage section for detailed description of these functions.

Usage

Presentation

Once installed, you can add rating stars to your posts by using [rating:] tags.

Normal rating:

[rating:3.5] = Rating:

By default, this will be interpreted as 3.5/5, as shown in the rating stars generated. Default denominator can be changed via options detailed in the next section. Even though this tagging style is simple, it might not be future proof when someday you decided to change the default denominator to say 10 (for whatever reason). In this case 3.5 will be interpreted as 3.5/10, which is very different compared to 3.5/5. Once you start using this tagging style, make sure you are not going to change the default denominator in the future. :)

[rating:3/4] = Rating:

“3/4″ will generate a “3 out of 4 stars” rating and “2/8″ will generate “2 out of 8 stars” and so on. This will continue to work as long as the denominator is not larger than 20. Beyond that, the score will be normalized and display in the default 5 stars system, as shown in the next example.

[rating:93/100] = Rating:

The “Rating:” prefix you can see in all examples above is the default prefix, which you can remove easily to show just the stars or add in your own custom CSS class by changing some options. More information about this in the Options section.

Overall rating:
Automatically calculated overall rating based on previous scores can be inserted using the following tag style:

[rating:overall] = Overall Rating:

Similar to the first example, this overall rating will be represented in the default 5 star rating system. It is possible to force the overall rating to be outputted in different number of stars by using the following tag style:

[rating:overall/4] = Overall Rating:

The “Overall Rating:” is again, the default prefix, which can be changed via options. For more information, see Options.

Custom images:
First of all, the default star image used is taken from the excellent Silk icon set. These png icons support different background colours via png transparency. However, you can still use your own star images by replacing the 3 images included in the “star-rating” plugin folder, namely “star.png”, “halfstar.png” and “blankstar.png”. File extensions can be changed via options if desired.

For your information, “tiny-star.png”, “tiny-halfstar.png” and “tiny-blankstar.png” are only used by special functions that output list of reviews based on stored data in the database. Feel free to replace them with your own images as well if desired.

Text only output:
By default, this plugin will output text only ratings for your RSS feeds and use graphical output when someone is reading the post on your site. This is, in my opinion, the optimal choice since some RSS readers do not support images. However, if you like you can output images for your RSS feeds too, or oppositely, output text only ratings for both RSS and posts displayed on your site. Please refer to the Options section if you want to make these changes.

Data (for advanced users)

Database writing is turned off by default. In order to use these advanced features, you will need to manually turn it on by changing the option values, see Options for more details. If you are not interested in this feature, you should skip this section.

Custom fields
If database writing is turned on, this plugin will parse your document searching for rating tags and store the overall rating score into a custom field called “rating” when you edit or save your blog post. The name of the custom field can be changed via options to prevent conflict with other plugins. The reason why custom field is used instead of a new database table is the ease of implementation and the fact that most people write reviews occasionally. The downside of this is when uninstalling this plugin, you will need to manually remove those “rating” entries within the custom field table.

To check if this plugin is doing its job, once you turned on the database writing, go to edit one of your older posts which already used the rating tags (or simply insert the rating tags into any post if you’re new to this plugin) and choose “Save and Continue Editing”. Now, check the custom field near the bottom of the editing panel to see if a new “rating” field has been added. If it’s there, congrats, this plugin is working properly; if it’s not, you might have forgotten to turn on the database writing option, or the rating tag is invalid. Feel free to post your questions here (with detailed explanation) if you can’t get this to work.

Once you turned on this auto insert feature, you can still disable it for specific post by putting [rating:none] anywhere in your blog post, preferably at the bottom for tidyness.

Functions
4 different functions are provided in this plugin that allow you to output a list of reviews based on date, rating score, or randomly selected. These functions uses “rating” custom field data to retrieve and sort the reviews. You need to either turn on autometa (see Options) or manually put these rating in yourself.

1. sr_getreviews()

sr_getreviews($limit, $orderby, $order, $usestar, $prefix, $suffix)

$limit
- number of reviews to be returnedAcceptable value: any integer
Default value: 5

$usestar
- number of star to be used for ratingAcceptable value: any integer
Default value: 5
Note 1: put in “0″ to output rating in percentage i.e. numerically
Note 2: rating stars used are with tiny prefix (tiny-star.png, tiny-blankstar.png etc.), they are smaller than regular stars in blog post

$prefix
- prefix to be put before the code for each reviewsAcceptable value: any valid XHTML tags or plain text
Default value: “<li>”

$suffix
- suffix to be put after the code for each reviewsAcceptable value: any valid XHTML tags or plain text
Default value: “</li>”

This function is intended to be used within the WordPress Loop. You can put this within the loop to display rating score or stars in categories, tags, or main page for each posting. See examples: categories, tags, main page.

$post_id
- the ID of current post within the loopAcceptable value: $post->ID

Customization

Starting from version 0.4, a default CSS is imported into the WordPress header, which I hope will work nicely with your blog theme. If not, feel free to open the CSS and edit it or disable the CSS import by setting $sr_mycss to 1, which will remove all the default styling for CSS classes associated with this plugin.

By default, ratings and reviews returned by listing functions are hardcoded with special CSS classes, namely “sr-review” for the review permalink and “sr-rating” for the ratings returned, which can be either numerical percentage or star images.

You might want to take a look at another plugin I’ve written called “MyCSS”, which allows you to attach and edit custom stylesheet that’s independent of the blog theme you’re using. This makes it convenient and easy to organize theme independent CSS classes such as those used in plugins, saving you the trouble of appending these classes into your theme’s core CSS everytime you change a theme.

Options

Hopefully this plugin will work as desired in an “out of the box” way so that you don’t need to change anything. However, several extra options are still provided for those of you who would like to have it your way. :)

Since this plugin is still in its early stage, setting options in the WordPress admin panel is not supported yet. For now, you will need to open up the php file using either your favourite text editor or WordPress built-in plugin editor to change some of the variables you can find near the top of the code.

Download

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If you like this plugin, express your love by donating and sharing this plugin with your readers!

Support

If you have any questions, suggestions, or found any bugs in this plugin, feel free to post them in your comments. I’ll try my best to answer them but there’s no guarantee, so don’t be disappointed if you do not hear back from me promptly. :/ If you find this plugin useful and feel like donating some money for my effort, please use the PayPal button above, thanks! <3

History

0.4 [2007.11.02]

Added: Sort reviews by title

Added: sr_listreviews() function to output all reviews in a sortable table (good for dedicated review page)

Added: Default CSS stylesheet (can be turned off via options)

Added: Cut off long title when getting list of reviews for sidebar

Changed: XHTML markup for list of reviews generated

Changed: Tiny star images

Fixed: Division by zero if overall tag is placed at the top of a post

Misc: Cleaned up the code and fixed minor bugs

0.3.1 [2006.09.12]

Fixed: Sorting bugs

0.3 [2006.08.08]

Added: Support to store rating data into database

Added: Functions to output list of reviews, sortable by date or by rating scores

[rating:overall] automatically calculates overall rating based on previous scores. Is there a way to make it calculate overall based on following scores?
I want to be able add overall rating at the top of the post. Is it possible?
Thank you for this great plugin!

hey i am having a lot of trouble with adding rating stars to my sidebar under a banner. The code [rating:5/5] work for post i already tested it but not in the text area of my sidebar how can i add stars to my sidebar? thanks !

Hi.
I have installed the plugin into my site but i don’t understand how this plugin is working. I inserted into a table for voting movies. Why it’s not working when i try to click on the stars to vote?

Hi. After updating your plugin on my website, my “newly added” 5 star reviews now show as 3400% , while the older 5 star reviews still show as 100%… This has messed up the full review list, can you offer any suggestions as to what has gone wrong?

I would like to use your plugin on my website about coocking recipies…
I managed to enable the rating on posts.
I yust didn’t manage to make it work in the comments.
Do you know what i have to do (besides enable it in the settings..)

Love the plug, runs great on my page (although I have hidden the stars so it blends with my original post style. I do have one question: How do you actually go about using the functions? Do I just insert “” into the body of a page or what? I have had no luck getting this to display, and – yes – I did change the autometa to 1.

Just wondering if there is any way to change the alt tag of the different star rating pictures that are outputted. For example have the alt tag for a 2 star rating be “Nothing Special” and the alt tag for a 5 star rating be “Something to Write Home About!”

I have very little techie knowledge, so please dumb down your answer for me. : / I’m setting up to redirect my entire site to a new Wordpress review site. With this plugin, how do I add some html code into the text widget to display the ratings? I would like to have some sort of side-widget that displays either recent ratings, or best rated on the sidebar. I read the usage instructions and looks like greek to me, and I don’t even know if this addon has that ability. I appreciate your time.

If I send you some money, will you upgrade the plugin so that I can choose which category to display a list of reviews? I know you have worked on the plugin in awhile, but this is an oft requested feature. Thanks so much.

I’m using WP 2.9.1 and Star Rating 0.4
Using [rating:5] in post works perfectly.
But I tried to use functions : sr_getreviews() or sr_listreviews() in a post, in a page, in sidebar (widget) and it doesn’t work.
Even the function sr_getsingle() in a post doesn’t work.
I turn on $sr_autometa in the php file of course.

Hello, I’ve been using Star Ratings for Reviews for a while and have come across this weird thing where it displays way too many stars. Even deleting the custom field and reentering does not work either.

I love this plugin and have been using it for over a year. I have a quick question, though. Can I add a class to the image output? I would like the code output to look something like this: . Is that possible?

Thank you so much for your plugin. It helped me so much! Thanks.
Hope you could have more plugins in the future. If you are free, is it possible for you to have a post on how to do the “notify me of followup comments via e-mail”? I find that absolutely convenient.
Yet again, your effort is greatly appreciated.

I have this error how can i fix this ploblem
Warning: str_repeat() [function.str-repeat]: Second argument has to be greater than or equal to 0 in /home/fergusga/public_html/wp-content/plugins/star-rating-for-reviews/star-rating.php on line 327